I'm an urban farmer - have been for the past 13 years. I am not self sufficient, but I grow a lot of my own veg out the back in a fairly tiny space. This blog is the story of how I do it, what grows, and how I use it.
Urban farming/city gardening is great for lost of reasons - not least the delicious and healthy food that you can produce for yourself & your friends & neighbours. If only a few people reading this blog are inspired to trade flowers or grass for vegetables, then I'll be happy.

Monday, October 23, 2006

Fruit in the garden

We have just moved to a new garden, so we need to restock. In deciding on what fruit to plant, I am guided by my own taste buds. What do I love to eat and cook with?

A good few years ago, one of my roommates declared that he loved gooseberries (I'm indifferent), so I planted one. Every year it fruited, and no one ever picked any of the fruit. I suppose that the birds were grateful, but I learned a good lesson.

So far we have bought 2 blueberry bushes. This particular variety needs an acidic soil, so we have also bought some ericaceous compost to dig in. However, in doing some research on this, it sems like coffee grounds and tea leaves may have the same effect, so I will do some experiments with that.

We have ordered 2 apple trees from Seed Savers (www.seedsavers.ie), and a Conference pear. In marked contract, we have bought a pear tree, and a cherry tree from Lidl, it will be interesting to see which does better. According to my dear husband, who was dispatched to Lidl for the fruit trees, there was practically a riot over the apple trees, which is encouraging. The more people that are growing food, the better I like it.

We have a couple of strawberries growing in a planter. I'm hoping to convince one of my friends to pass on some alpine strawberry runners. And I'd like some summer fruiting, and some autumn fruiting raspberries. That will probably be enough fruit for now. Well, maybe a blackcurrant as well, just for the pleasure of pruning it.

This probably sounds like a lot, and indeed, we now have a large garden. However, in my tiny plot in Dublin, I had an apple tree, a pear tree, loganberries, raspberries, a red and a black currant bush. So don't be discouraged by lack of space. And in a lot of ways, fruit bushes require a lot less care than vegetables.

4 Comments:

The rules for planting fruit trees are the same as for otherr trees. Best time of the year to plant them is when they are dormant - Nov to Feb approximately. This mostly applies to bade root trees, it's fairly safe to plant pot grown trees at othe times, but you need to be careful with watering, and they will suffer a bit of a setback.

i would really like to get some blueberry bushes for the summer, but don't know where to get them from. the online catalogues which sell them in the UK won't ship to Ireland. where did u buy your blueberry bushes or wd u have any suggestions please? thx for the help

To the person who asked about where to get blueberry bushes - we got ours in a local garden centre, but if you're reading this today (1st March '07), get yourself to your nearest LIDL - they're having a big garden special today, and blueberry bushes are on the 'hot list'. You might need some ericaceous compost to go with them, depending on your local soil conditions - check the packaging if you're going to LIDL, or ask the staff if you get them from a garden centre.